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but don't forget that all dogs are individuals and react different to different things. bad breath and an unpleasant skin odor are signs that something is wrong. it might well clear up with a better diet alone, but if it doesn't, i'd investigate food ingredients for possible sensitivities or allergies.

it doesn't necessarily have to have anything with the quality of food either - case in point: i fed my own dog (who otherwise eats a home prepared diet with raw and cooked items) innova evo as one of his two daily meals for 3 days while on a road trip and he had "dog breath" the second day. usually his mouth doesn't have any odor at all. and i'd consider evo the best dry food on the market right now.

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One of my Standard Poodles has such rotten breath, it smells downright necrotic. Think week old roadkill in August. His breath will stink right through his face and smell up a whole room. :-?

We did diet changes, added probiotics, a dental, some meaty bones (turkey necks) to chew on, everything we could think of. Nothing cleared it up. We ended up doing x-rays because it was so bad and we couldn't find a cause. Perry's stomach was shown to be oddly distorted, so we (I say "we"... the vet, but I was present) did an exploratory surgery thinking it was a diaphragmatic(sp?) hernia. Still, nothing, no explanation for the oddly shaped stomach and nothing to explain the death smell (though "we" did tack Perry's stomach to one side while "we" were in there to help prevent a future episode of bloat with that weird setting stomach). A visiting vet suggested it may be a bacterial overgrowth that could be linked to some long named something (something or other enteropathy?) and it got way over my head at that point.

Anyway, she suggested trying tilosin (Tylan) powder for a while. Just the very minutest pinch daily, but the smell cleared up almost immediately. I hate with a passion to give Perry this stuff daily, but we couldn't find anything else that worked, not even probiotics... Nzymes and Prozyme (I think?) and his teeth were clean.

All this to say perhaps it's some weird bacterial overgrowth.

I'm still open to new suggestions. The tilosin isn't something he needs to survive, so I'm willing to try other options.

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I've been thinking of mixing a peppermint/lavender/water tincture for Zaphod and spritzing his mouth. (He has some very active anal glands which he takes care of himself but oh the nasty surprise when he runs up to you all dopey, happy and blah.) I'll let you know if it helps.